Hmmm...there is only one problem. What would Google do with mis-spelled signs like these:

http://streetviewgallery.corank.com/tech/story/another-funny-sign

or

http://streetviewgallery.corank.com/tech/story/spelling-Bee

...if one just posts a bunch of random letters and numbers? Will Google index that as well? If everyone did that (uniquely) it would be like tinyurl or some such. Find me? ask for slrfcbq (or equivalent). That would be interesting! Of course finding out street numbers is another thing, so one should have LOTS of those.

As for character recognition we still need to spell (or get larger signs) as our friend mentions above.

So, like many current video games, Google will be able to embed advertising into street scenes captured for "Street View".

That should provide for some amusement to see Google adverts embedded into the pictures of Microsoft Redmond Headquarters. I wonder if they'll be able to map advertising images onto shirts, briefcases and cars, or if they're going to settle for fake billboards on the Grand Canyon? A really subtle way would be to simply replace the reflections in windows with advertising. That would be almost subliminal.

You can soon do a Google maps search for the INVISIBLE BICYCLE, and also find MAH BUKKIT, which theys be steelin.

So you're searching for a local small-business hobby shop that you only know by name. You type in the name, and suddenly it appears with a map and directions... and ads for eBay listings that list the item you want cheaper.

Yeah, real smart. It was good up to the advertizing.

And as a large proportion of text visible in any high street is advertising billboards, you could starve trying to find a McDonalds...

"Mobe, take me to the nearest McDonalds; No, that's an advertisement. No, there's nothing there - Maybe a delivery truck drove by the day that Google photographed that street. No, that's a council litter bin, sponsored by McDonalds. Oh forget it, there might some leftovers in that bin..."

Is "mobe" still banned? IGMC....

'search engine cum world power'

I know googles good at indexing porn, do you really want to be top on the search for cum???? Miss Hilton seemed appropriate!

And if they start to index the EXIF information in the image (Camera, exposure, date & time taken, etc) we could have a bit of fun here. There are plenty of programs that permit the amendment of such info. So the text in the image says one thing (as found by Google's OCR), and the EXIF says something else.

Could we manage to get Googleplex to have a nervous breakdown? If not, then the time has come to reign the company in.

I'm assuming you're not being deliberately obtuse...

Cum is the Latin for 'with' and is commonly used to imply a second function.

If you put up a sign with big words in public, thanks to google, now just ANYBODY can read it!

*shudders*

Everyone upload an image to anywhere with a photo of yourself holding up a piece of paper with "F**k you Google!" on it. Let's see if we can fill page 1 of Google Images with these...

You know all it's going to find are hundreds of 'related' pictures of lolcats, they'll be the OCR equivalent of spam blogs.

Has anyone pointed out to Google that they don't own the majority of images out there, and that they don't have the rights to use them, altered or not, in their advertising?

Hmmmm.... Don't think they've run that by the lawyers yet.

you could get away with publishing your email address as an image, and avoid 99% of all spam. If Google does this, will spammers have to bother developing their own OCR bots?

And why not indexing the captchas ?